Crossing, a huge outlet mall in Auburn Hills, twenty-one miles from Flint, and she made fudge at a place called the Fudgery, at the same mall. This last job aroused unexpected associations for Tamarla, who remembered going as a girl to the train station in St. Louis every weekend to watch fudgemakers perform their elaborate routine, clown- Ing and putting on a show for custom- ers. It turned out that Tamarla was a natural at it. She loved her jobs, but going to work brought new stresses, and exacerbated old ones Tamarla had to take a bus to Auburn Hills, which meant that she was away from home for ten hours a da She benefitted from subsidized day care for the kids, but money still seemed an ir- remediable problem. Work First didn't teach money-management skills. Mter Dedricwas sent to jail in 1997, Tamarla's brother, whose name was Sir Marcus Winfrey, had moved in with her for a bit, and, he later told police, he made extra money by selling ten-dollar portions of crack. Tamarla wanted her kids to have a good Christmas, and she accepted some of the money, and even partici- pated in some of the transactions, she told me. In October of 1998, the local narcotics squad raided the house, and found marked money in one of Tamar- la's shoes. Sir Marcus told police that she had stopped selling crack months be- fore, and she wasn't charged. T amarla had saved nearly a thousand dollars, but found herself falling behind in her rent payments. There was the water bill and the electricity; and the kids were always leaving the light switches on and running a second tubful of water when the first bath turned cool. They were starting to get to her. Once, when Chico was rude to an adult, Tamarla smacked him across the face so hard that the next day he started bleeding in school. This prompted a visit from a social worker with child-protective services. Tamarla explained to the social worker what had happened. The incident went down in her file as a "substantiated" case of abuse. Tamarla's middle child was especially worrisome. He was aggressive, even vio- lent; on one occasion he jabbed a school- mate in the neck with a pencil. Another day, he reportedly brought a cigarette lighter to school. Such incidents got .. \ " . ,,'.,:;'<'-, ..' - ..;"t -, , 4S ", '\; , Jr ìj ; 'l , ,. :'i ;íti øf '-1; / -- --0!ft:!?::!/;/ ...Øít. { ' $. ;-i12 1 -'-- :; 1 1 d; :JID r j , ......-< J' = \ti\\ 'ii1i \ \ \ m l ;" I (= ; " .. t\ -\ ' , \\it1\ ,\ :w' I . - k. 'iL ,'7 1\1 It - _ -- I ,_"' , > <-;;; ç:<:;"" :'-: ."'pt.,:\" '\. {\ \ttI _ -= ' II "..;..-- ., " ,'.wW, ..,',',"<,; ",,', ..' v .";"",,,,,, . , ..x,.".., k;"..", "''''.r -' C\:, - -u ,.,,,,:'" -,.,"..':"'!',..,'..:/.., ,',', ....; rr.. ,,;?;... "" A; --i'. ,v"' - \' _ , {J - '0" , ':, " , _ " ,'-r u. \1 1 ( p . , fi" J[," -:$J('J$i'.' . \ . -, 2ØJf; - ' · ' \] I . -, ,:. ' / ' ' : / / - _ ....-- - <..1-." t! l, :I'-.,,'c -I!./ ) - _ : ;-:r c " .:. )f " /; -:. ": ,, '_þ :: . !'-^ /) "Getting U.S.D.A. approval means a lot to you, doesn't it?" . him disciplined several times, and his first-grade teacher, Alicia Judd, sepa- rated him from the rest of the class, moving his desk away from the other students up to the front of the class- room, next to her. When school officials expressed concern to Tamarla, she ac- knowledged that the boy had problems with anger and aggression, and urged them to try a soft touch with him. "They would just tell me about how aggressive he was," she says. ' d all I could tell them was 'He likes to be hugged. Maybe if you tried hugging him instead of pushing him away, maybe you'd get bet- ter results.' My mother told him one day, 'You get five hugs a day; five kisses a day. You overexceed your five, you're working into the next day's hugs and kisses.' He didn't care. He wanted a hug every five minutes." In February of this year, Tamarla's life fell apart. On the twentieth, police spotted Dedric, who had been paroled at Christmas, cruising a hooker, and tried to pull him over. He led them on a twenty-minute chase through Flint until he was stopped by the police. He was sentenced to seven months in jail. (Since being in prison, he has been in- dicted, with his mother, two sisters, and several others, for conspiring to distrib- ute crack.) The day after Dedric's arrest, Febru- ary 21st, was Tamarla's deadline for va- cating the house on Genesee: she had . fallen more than six months behind on rent, even though she was holding down two jobs. Her landlord "really worked . th " h " B b WI me, s e says. ut once you get e- hind on rent it is really hard to catch up." Tamarla says that she failed to find another house, and that she cotÙdn't turn to her mother, who had taken a job working nights, or to her sister, who had gone back to school, so she asked her brother, Sir Marcus, to help. She knew that his ratty house, on Juliah Avenue, wasn't the sort of home that the social workers would approve of-Sir Marcus and his friend J amelle James, who spent a lot of time there, were regular mari- juana users-but it was just a couple of blocks away, and she wanted the kids to be able to stay at the Buell school. Al- though it was later reported that the boys were made to sleep on a couch, she says that Sir Marcus gave up his own bed to them, and saw to it that they were bathed and walked to school every da She thought the arrangement would be only short-term. Meanwhile, the school had been after Tamarla to get her sons into ther- apy, and she arranged an appointment with a local counselling center called Insight. Tamarla and the boys missed their first appointment, but they met with an Insight therapist on February 22nd. The therapist talked with the boys and with Tamarla, and afterward she told Tamarla that the six-year-old THE NEW YORKER, JULY 3, 2000 45